1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to isolated polypeptides having lipase activity and isolated nucleic acid sequences encoding the polypeptides. The invention also relates to nucleic acid constructs, vectors, and host cells comprising the nucleic acid sequences as well as methods for producing and using the polypeptides.
2. Description of the Related Art
Lipases (EC 3.1.1.3) are enzymes that can hydrolyze triglycerides to release fatty acid.
Detergents formulated with lipolytic enzymes are known to have improved properties for removing fatty stains. For example, LIPOLASE(trademark) (Novo Nordisk A/S, Bagsvaerd, Denmark), a microbial lipase obtained from the fungus Thermomyces lanuginosus (also called Humicola lanuginosa), has been introduced into many commercial brands of detergent.
WO 98/26057 discloses a polypeptide having lipase and phospholipase activity (GenBank Acc. No. A85215) obtained from Fusarium oxysporum. 
It is an object of the present invention to provide improved polypeptides having lipase activity and nucleic acid encoding the polypeptides.
The present invention relates to isolated polypeptides having lipase activity selected from the group consisting of:
(a) a polypeptide having an amino acid sequence which has at least 85% identity with amino acids 31 to 349 of SEQ ID NO:2;
(b) a polypeptide encoded by a nucleic acid sequence which hybridizes under high stringency conditions with (i) nucleotides 1525 to 2530 of SEQ ID NO:1, (ii) the cDNA sequence contained in nucleotides 1525 to 2530 of SEQ ID NO:1, (iii) a subsequence of (i) or (ii) of at least 100 nucleotides, or (iv) a complementary strand of (i), (ii), or (iii);
(c) a variant of the polypeptide having an amino acid sequence of SEQ ID NO:2 comprising a substitution, deletion, and/or insertion of one or more amino acids; and
(d) a fragment of (a) or (b) that has lipase activity.
The present invention also relates to isolated nucleic acid sequences encoding the polypeptides and to nucleic acid constructs, vectors, and host cells comprising the nucleic acid sequences as well as methods for producing and using the polypeptides.